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Velius
Velius was one of the most vile and evil of all the Shok'Thola, the Altarin'Dakor supreme Warlords. He was one of the first to join with Sado and receive immortality granted by the Entity. Erratic and considered by most to be insane, he was quite possibly the most personally powerful of all the Warlords and was feared by even the other Shok'Thola. Though he held fewer territories or fleets than most of the Warlords, he often acted behind the scenes on his own agendas, such as when he tried to assassinate both Zalaria and Xar Kerensky against Altima's order. Though the attempt was unsuccessful and his body was destroyed, he returned later to plague New Imperium forces again in the war. History Velius was born under the name Jarthanis on the planet Kashi around 28,600 BBY. He was a Kashi Mer Mystic, a group of reclusive scholars who focused on Force lore and held a strong distrust of outsiders. Jarthanis was found to be extremely strong in the Force and advanced rapidly in his studies. He was especially known for his levelheaded and by-the-books attitude. Rarely showing emotion, he preferred to let logic and the law prevail. He excelled in every task given him and eventually became the head instructor at the academy. After serving as Dean for over fifty years, Jarthanis began to grow more lenient towards his students, especially towards outsiders seeking entrance into the academies. His contact with the other sects of the Followers of Ashla led to his acquaintance with Sado and the other future Shok'Thola. When Sado established his connection to the Entity, Jarthanis was one of the first Followers that he approached, using logic and a well-conceived argument to sway the scholar to his side. He contended that immortality would offer Jarthanis all the more time to focus on studying the mysteries of the universe and the Force. When that argument failed to fully convince him, Sado tried a new tactic; he suggested that holding his emotions in check for nearly a century had actually inhibited Jarthanis from fully understanding the universe. The power granted him by the Entity would enable him to achieve a greater understanding and enlightenment than he'd ever dreamed possible. Finally, Jarthanis was convinced, and he joined with Sado. His contact with Sado threw him out of favor with the rest of the Kashi Mer Mystics, however. Their harsh distrust of outsiders brought swift punishment to Jarthanis, and in the end, the proud example of the academy's finest scholars was himself exiled from the Kashi Mer System for his intermingling. It would be a foretaste of the rebellion that would come in his life, and would also spell the doom of the Kashi Mer Dynasty in the future, as well. The years following the Great Schism changed Jarthanis forever, for he could not have known how much the Entity's influence would alter him. Once he delved into the realm of passion and power that the Entity gave him, he never wanted to go back to what he once was. Giving himself fully to his obsessions and to hedonism, he became the most extreme of all the Warlords, often entering into battle personally for the sheer thrill of killing. He began using every form of drug and spice imaginable, allowing their full effect to irrevocably alter his mind. During the course of the Great War, he fell further and further into insanity and eccentricity. The Great War Although he wasn't as directly involved in the war, he was a scourge to the Galactic Alliance of Free Systems and the Followers of Ashla, for he couldn't be controlled or reasoned with (as much as any Warlord could be by that point). Calling himself Velius, he would appear seemingly at random among the Followers, their armies, or even inhabited civilian populations and would begin the slaughter. No one was able to stop him due to his extreme power in the Force. At one instance near the end of the war, he was holed up in his palace on the planet Tritonia, long after the rest of the planet's population had been virtually wiped out by biological warfare. An elite team of twenty Masters and fifty Knights attempted to assassinate Velius there while he was in a drug-induced stupor. However, in a fit of rage Velius slaughtered the whole lot of them, sending many of them flying out through the palace windows and down over a kilometer to the streets below. Velius was also keen on exacting revenge on the Kashi Mer Dynasty for exiling him from their number. Though it was the only real agenda he doggedly pursued during the war, he eventually returned to the system and in a fit of rage caused the sun to go supernova. The Kashi Mer System was wiped out along with all his people, leaving only a few survivors - including Arden Lyn - to remember their story. His exile into the Altarin'Dakor galaxy along with the others was more by apathetic choice than actively retreating. Should he have chosen to stay in the galaxy and wreak havoc for millennia further, he may very well have been able to do so. The Altarin'Dakor Galaxy Velius wasn't as concerned about carving out a new empire for himself in the Altarin'Dakor galaxy once they'd arrived; he simply contented himself with terrorizing the native populations and discovering new kinds of spice and other narcotics. He subsisted like this for millennia, sinking further and further into reclusive insanity. Later, he emerged once more and began besieging the territories of other Shok'Thola. He quickly conquered the territory of several lesser Warlords, killing those Shok'Thola in the process, and assumed their holdings as his own. His expansion was limited, however, and he was apparently satisfied with a smaller empire a fraction of the size of his peers'. With Velius in command, however, the territories quickly fell into a hellish state of chaos and anarchy. Velius maintained a society based on fear of him and bitter rivalry among his subordinates. He often murdered his own command staff without any seeming reason, and all who served him were terrified that their insane master would choose them next. Subsequently, there was a high turnover rate, was little organization among the military, and virtually no working government. Famine and starvation was widespread among the worlds of his territory, infrastructure collapsed, and societies fell into the dark ages. Only a few choice Titans and other ships, part of Velius' elite unit, were kept in fighting condition, though as always Velius considered them secondary to his own personal power. The Return Eventually Velius stopped attending meetings among the Shok'Thola and fell into virtual obscurity. However, when the time of the Return approached, he became much more active. He returned to the meetings, threatened the other Shok'Thola and stated his intensions of taking over the entire Return. The others were unsure what to make of him, fearing his insanity had reached new levels, and they did not understand why Altima continued to give Velius free reign. Finally after Zalaria defected to the New Imperium Velius declared he would kill her and Xar Kerensky, and traveled to Varnus to do just that. Only at the last minute, using the Kajeat/Traveler Force technique of the Focus Bomb was Zalaria able to stop Velius from destroying entire planet and killed the Warlord. Velius, however, along with the other Warlords, knew how to regenerate his body much as Emperor Palpatine did. Traveling back to Altarin'Dakor space, he regrouped and began plotting a new way to wreak havoc among the New Imperium and the galaxy at large. Personality and Traits Velius was believed to be insane, even among the other Shok'Thola. He was known for heavy drug use without detoxification, at levels that would kill any known living creature, keeping himself alive only by the power granted through the Entity. He had the highest Force Power Level of any of the Warlords except for Altima himself; his power level was rumored to be somewhere in the realm of 600,000. He was completely devoted to hedonism and pleasure by any means, whether through physical means or through the Force, or other extremes, such as violence. He was the only Warlord known to regularly kill his own subordinates out of sheer pleasure, even when they had been successful at following his orders. This caused him to be feared greatly among his servants and threw his small empire into utter chaos, though Velius himself didn't seem to care in the least. His appearance changed constantly; he regularly covered his face and body in intricate tattoos, sometimes making himself look like a wild animal or alien creature, only later to have the tattoos burned off, heal his skin and start anew. At various times he would have razor-sharp teeth, a forked tongue, dreadlocks, different colored skin, hair and eyes, and clawlike nails on his fingers. There was no consistent appearance to him, except that he always held a fit, muscular frame, a product of his biological Force knowledge, not of any physical training. Due to his power level, he was often quite lazy, which also translated into less ambition militarily or territorially. His philosophy rested on the premise that he was personally powerful enough to deal with any threat, something that kept him aloof and outside most other Warlords' schemes, and subsequently kept him from holding the position of top Warlord or Spearhead - he simply didn't care enough to try for the position. Category:New pages Category:Characters